Russia

We have come to the end of the year and for the month of December we are looking across the month at historic events that occurred during the month including the death of a famous musician, an explorer’s achievement, the first woman in Parliament, and the coronation of Napoleon. We do not claim that these are all the noteworthy historical events in December. If you know of any significant ‘December’ events that you have found in The Archive share them …

Today, we’re looking at two events that occurred on 18 May: the Khodynka Tragedy in 1896 and Jacqueline Cochran’s breaking of the sound barrier in 1953. Khodynka Tragedy The first took place in 1896 in the Khodynka Field, Moscow. The field was the site of festivities honouring the recent coronation of Emperor Nicholas II. Thousands gathered to celebrate and to, hopefully, receive rumoured gifts of food and a commemorative cup. With growing and increasingly frenzied crowds, the police force on …

On 15 March 1917, amid the chaos and fury of the Russian Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor of all Russia, abdicated from the throne and ended 300 years of Romanov rule. Russians of all classes were on the streets of Petrograd (formerly known as St Petersburg), and Nicholas’ own military had joined the ranks of protestors. How did this monarch fall and a dynasty end? On the anniversary of Tsar Nicholas’ abdication, we will take a look through …

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the country lawyer who became a revolutionary, died at his estate at Gorki settlement on 21 January 1924. We trawled through The British Newspaper Archives new stories that reported on Lenin’s death, and the reports are far from complimentary – which is, of course, revealing in itself. Reflecting on Lenin’s death, Churchill wrote: ‘Their worst misfortune was his birth, their next worst – his death’. There are hundreds of interesting stories about Lenin’s death in The Archive. We have pulled out …